As Gurgaon reels under garbage crisis, meet the workers toiling hard to keep it clean

Gurgaon has a garbage crisis. Though the government has already declared a “Solid Waste Exigency”, little seems to have changed on the ground. The city, with a population of around 30 lakh, according to a 2022 Health department survey, produces 1,200 tonnes of waste every day. To clean it, the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) has 3,010 sanitation workers and a budget of Rs 500 crore. Last year, it spent Rs 254 crore — less than half its allocation.

There are over 8,000 bulk waste generators (BWG) in Gurgaon. According to revised guidelines, BWGs are those set-ups that produce more than 100 kg of waste every day.

At Rs 5 lakh per person, the city has one of the three highest per capita incomes in the country. It also has 6.4 lakh taxpayers, up from 5.9 in March last year, according to the Income Tax department. With Rs 42,244 crore collected in tax last year, Gurgaon contributes up to 3.7% of income tax in the country. The city is home to offices of half of Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon. It also hosts several unicorn companies including Shiprocket and Cars24.

‘So much garbage, so few of us’

Rajarani’s group cleans the mounds of garbage in front of 152 office buildings, shops, roads, a parking lot, and surrounding areas in Sector 44. Her job has left Rajarani with a tanned face and swollen feet. She sweeps and shovels the garbage into a tractor-trolley parked a few metres away. By the end of her shift at 3.30 pm, fresh bags of waste appear. “It is tiring. There is so much garbage and so few of us, it is impossible,” she says. Despite her gruelling shift, she has to cover the distance back home on foot. “Taking an auto costs me Rs 50 and buses are very few, so I walk most days,” she says.

Of the 3,010 workers, only 175 (about 5%) are regular employees who get dearness, housing rent, petrol, mobile, and uniform allowances. The rest are simply paid Rs 16,900 every month. Some are also provided brooms, oil and soap allowances, totalling Rs 568, apart from a sanitation allowance of Rs 1,000. There is no insurance to cover them in case of an emergency.

Even as the likes of Rajarani toil away, complaints continue to pour in at the Municipal Corporation’s redressal cell. So far in July, the cell has received 1,956 sanitation-related complaints. Sanitation inspectors field at least 10 calls every hour with grievances regarding door-to-door collection of waste. “Waste has not been lifted from our homes for three days” seems to be a common refrain.

A complex machinery

Apart from sanitation workers, there is a complex machinery comprising a contractor with 354 trucks that collects waste door-to-door from 75,000 households. The streets, parking lots, footpaths and other public spaces are cleaned by workers, while earth movers, trucks, tractors and trolleys do the heavy lifting. Six contractors have also been hired by the MCG for additional labour and machinery across four zones that include all villages and stretches of the city — from Ambience Island to Rajeev Chowk. A senior officer says that around 3,000 people have been employed by these contractors for Rs 10,500 per month.

Most of the complaints that MCG has been grappling with come from Zone 3, where Rajarani works. In July alone, of around 2,000 sanitation-related complaints the civic body received, 692 were from Zone 3. The highest number of complaints – 219 — are from Ward 29 housing the most elite addresses in Gurugram: Malibu Town, Mayfield Garden, and Sushant Lok 2 and 3, among others in sectors 46, 47, 38, 62,57, and 51.

Most of the sanitation workers hail from Gurgaon, within a 10-km radius of their workplace such as Nathupur and Sikandarpur, while less than 500 are migrants. As much as 80% of them, union leader Kailash says, are Dalits. “The lack of funds and facilities for us make us feel like we are animals. No one listens to our concerns,” he says.

The waste the city generates comes in all shapes, sizes, and colours: plastic gunny sacks, bags of dog excrement, unsegregated food waste, plastic cups and plates, footwear, bathtubs, milk wrappers, discarded packets of chips, even ceramic utensils, and mattresses. “And lots of cigarette butts,” Rajarani says. The first stop for the garbage is one of many collection points before it all moves to the Bandhwari landfill – known as the “carcinogenic garbage mountain”.

While the workforce includes those who came to the region before it was a city, Rajarani is a local resident who had to give up her house for Gurgaon’s expansion. “I had a house at Sikandarpur, but it was demolished without intimation for the Yellow Line of the Delhi Metro. Seven years later, the government gave us 52 gajj in exchange for the 150 gajj they took. Even now, the land is vacant and a wine shop stands near it,” she says. She now lives in Sector 42. A small house with two cots and a kitchen pushed into a corner, the bathroom in the same hall — her family of four made it home in 2017.

“I worked hard to ensure my children are in a good line of work,” says Rajarani, who has been working for 14 years as a sweeper, the first four under a private contractor and later under the MCG. Rajarani’s two sons, ages 22 and 26, are B Tech graduates. Before joining MCG, she would stitch clothes and earn a living. “Around the time our house was demolished, I had to undergo surgery following a brain haemorrhage. This impeded my vision and hand-eye coordination and I had to take up the sweeper position,” she says.

As she sits down for a break, a rat scurries off from a mound near her. “There are too many pests and we have to work with no safety gear, and sometimes manually segregate waste. This is not our job. Besides, the roads in front of office spaces are the hardest to clean due to cigarette butts. It is as if the entire city is smoking,” says Rajarani whose mother was a sanitation worker with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD). “Things have improved now; my younger son was a Mensa scholar and now has a job. My children insist that I quit, but I will wait till they get married,” Rajarani says.

Last year, the garbage crisis deteriorated. The MCG’s move to hire new contractors for sanitation work had led to a months-long strike, as the services of 3,480 workers under private contractors were terminated and the new contractors did not hire them. The crisis was reflected in the Swachh Survekshan ranking 2023 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs; Gurgaon ranked 140 in the category of cities with more than 1 lakh population. This was when neighbouring New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) secured the seventh rank and Noida, 14th. In 2022, the city came 19th in the list of cities with a population of 1-10 lakh. Another corporate hub, Navi Mumbai, came third in 2023.

Among the workers are those who have seen the city rise from scratch. Such as Amal Ali who left West Bengal’s Malda 20 years ago. Now 40, he lives with his wife, also a sanitation worker, and four children. “I dropped out of school before Class 10 and left for Delhi with my uncle. I navigated the Delhi roads as an autorickshaw driver, but after two months, I called my father to ask for money to return. I was unhappy and returned to Malda, but after five years I came back, this time to Gurgaon,” he says. But it was a different city back then. “Fewer people and less garbage.”

In 2010, Ali started working for a contractor hired by the MCG. “My wife joined me later. My son works as a sanitation worker at a private company and earns Rs 9,000. He is just a teenager but has ended up like me,” says Ali. He says the life in Malda was better, as were his neighbours. “People here hurl abuses at me and ask me to clean their waste,” he says. Sikandarpur, where he lives, is one of the areas worst affected by the garbage crisis.

The situation on the ground has not improved even after the government declared that a ward that maintains cleanliness standards for two consecutive months will get a reward of Rs 1 crore. The MCG workers say six contractors have not deployed enough labourers and machines, adding to their workload.

The crisis isn’t about a shortage of funds.

According to MCG’s Chief Accounts Officer Vijay Singla, the budget allotted to the sanitation department last year was Rs 500 crore of which only Rs 245 crore was used. This year, Rs 375 crore has been allotted and Rs 80 crore has been spent so far, he says.

Narhari Singh Banger, the MCG Commissioner, says that funds for various projects, including a waste to energy and C&D (construction and demolition) waste plants, were allocated but the projects did not take off, owing to which funds lapsed. “In other areas, we have cut costs and saved, which is why there is less expenditure,” he says.

Jitender (38), the supervisor, says he has not been regularised for 10 years and still gets Rs 16,900 a month – exactly the same amount as the workers under him. “We are unable to make the authorities listen to us. After the termination of 25 workers for protesting last year, our union, too, has become weak,” he says. Jitender belongs to the Valmiki community; his mother was also a sanitation worker. “She was on the MCG rolls but has not received her share of PF (Provident Fund) yet owing to a mistake the clerk made while entering her gender,” he says.

Additional Commissioner, MCG, Balpreet Singh says the administration is looking at ways to resolve the crisis. “We will seek alternate methods if the demands are not met soon by the new garbage collection agency, Vimalraj Pvt Ltd. We are also in touch with other private vendors,” he says. Singh also says that they have sought funds to develop sites to process waste. “We have approached five companies to pick up C&D waste from roads,” he says.

As Rajarani rises to resume work, a traffic police officer, who had been sitting in a chair under a shed and listening to her, chimes in, “It is not a difficult line of work. Dalits traditionally get into this line…” Rajarani retorts: “I won’t let my sons do this.”